After that, Clervil's younger brother and mother started living in motels, and when she couldn’t pay for them anymore, they started staying with friends, and eventually, they had to stay in abandoned houses in Lake Worth for about 18 months.

To many people, Clervil's story sounds like a rough way to live at such a young age, but he never felt bad for himself.

"It's better than sleeping in the woods. Those abandoned houses to me were like God’s way of showing that he has his hands on us, because we never slept on the street,” Clervil said.

Clervil and his brother were eventually put in foster care and taken to Place of Hope in Jupiter, another foster-care campus.

After missing two years of school, Clervil went back to school and eventually met his mentor, Sal Tiano.

"He's so easy to talk to. We had an immediate connection," Tiano said.

After two years of going to Clervil’s football games, wrestling matches and spending weekends together, Tiano, his wife and four children had Clervil come live with them.

Clervil is now considered part of Tiano's family.

"Will has been every bit as good for my family as we may have been for him," Tiano said.

"This is absolutely the most successful story we could have envisioned, and we hope for many more," Place of Hope Executive Director Charles Bender said.

After two years of being in the Tiano family, Clervil said living on the streets motivates him.

"I realized how much you need education to move on in this world. Without education, you're stuck. With all that happened to me, I decided to be better than what the statistics say about me. I want to be a good statistic,” Clervil said.

Clervil graduated Friday evening from Jupiter Christian School with honors. It's something that he never thought would have been possible five years ago.

Clervil will attend Southeastern University in the fall and play football. He said he wants to major in psychology and social work, so he can one day help children who are going through the same thing that he went through not long ago.